Semiconductor devices are used in a variety of electronic applications, such as personal computers, cell phones, digital cameras, and other electronic equipment. Semiconductor devices are typically fabricated by sequentially depositing insulating or dielectric layers, conductive layers, and semiconductive layers of material over a semiconductor substrate, and patterning the various material layers using lithography to form circuit components and elements thereon. Many integrated circuits are typically manufactured on a single semiconductor wafer, and individual dies on the wafer are singulated by sawing between the integrated circuits along a scribe line. The individual dies are typically packaged separately, in multi-chip modules, or in other types of packaging, for example.
After the material is deposited on the wafer by a chemical vapor deposition (CVD) process, for example, the wafer is polished by a chemical mechanical polishing (CMP) process in a CMP apparatus. Although existing devices and methods for CMP process have been generally adequate for their intended purposes, they have not been entirely satisfactory in all respects. Consequently, it would be desirable to provide a solution for polishing wafers in CMP apparatuses.